A little bit of something for everyone on the road

There’s actually quite a lot to be said about The Little Unsaid, a band that embrace elements of rock, folk, electronica, jazz and alt-pop.

Fronted by songwriter John Elliott on vocals, keys and guitar, they are a collective with an original sound and rosy outlook.

Also in the line-up are Tim Heymerdinger on drums and percussion, FX and vocals; Mariya Brachkova on bass, moog and vocals; with viola player Alison D’Souza rounding up this merry quartet of musicans.

This year looks set to be the busiest year yet for The Little Unsaid as they finish new material in preparation for the next studio album.

But before then they are touring with their latest offering, Selected Works, heading to Thorton Little Theatre on Friday.

“It’s been a musical project that I’ve been doing getting on for seven years now,” John explained about The Little Unsaid.

“It started out just me on my own and it’s slowly kind of morphed into this band I’ve found over the last three years or so just travelling round the UK and meeting musicians and things, and playing with lots and lots of different people.

“The music darts around between lots of different genres because I’m into a lot of different stuff and you inevitably kind of steal a lot of stuff from whatever you are listening to at the time.

“But it’s basically songwriting and it’s music that in some way maps a personal journey I guess, but also the music is just about life.

“There’s something in it for everyone.”

Like many musicians, John had a love/hate relationship with music growing up.

He said: “I had some music lessons as a kid and hated it, and was very bad at it.

“I went to university in Manchester and did film and theatre – but weaved music into it as much as I could because it’s something I was interested in.

“Then after uni, I thought: ‘Do you know what, this is the one thing that has stuck with me all this time, I might see if I can make something out of it.’ And it just kind of slowly grew really.

“From touring and making music myself, you know recording in whatever cheap way I could, at home a lot of the time, roping other people in to help out, but mostly playing all the instruments myself, just kinda layering things up, and touring and just slowly building a little fan base, and most of those people are still with us today.